updated 7/20/2010
Big Environmentalism's Blinders
The American Wind Wildlife Institute brings together seven big national or international environmental organizations and the industrial wind energy industry to "facilitate[ ] the responsible development of wind energy with the least possible impact on wildlife and wildlife habitat." The Institute believes, in the words of founder Wayne Walker, the industry will soon "be contributing a significant amount to the nation's energy supply" that will result in "a long-term sustainable platform" for electricity generation for the nation. The industry has raised three million dollars for the Institute.
This collaboration reflects the co-opting of Big Environmentalism by an industry that needs billions in tax dollars or foregone tax revenues to erect hundreds of square miles of habitat disrupting, raptor and bat killing wind farms that generate at about 20% of their design capacity, mostly at night with the result that the electricity generated has little value and requires other generating sources to back it up when the wind is insufficient (or too strong) to allow wind farms to operate. Perhaps worse, the industry has shown no regard for human communities which, especially in the northeast, have already populated rural areas so densely that wind farms cannot be sited without substantially intruding on the peace and quiet.
Big Environmentalism's willingness to jump into bed with a clearly unsustainable approach to clean energy reflects a remarkable disregard for science. When will Big Wind be able to wean itself from the grid-connected model of electricity generation, among the most intrusive approaches to clean energy? When will Big Wind be able to wean itself from the public teet? When will Big Environmentalism stop playing politics for money?
Big Environmentalism's flirtation with Big Wind reflects not only a disconnect with the science of wind energy, but a disconnect with Grassroots Environmentalism, which is spawned wherever wind farms are sited without regard to human communities. Grassroots environmentalists find fundamental injustice in the demand of Big Wind and its supporters that they become a sacrifice zone for a failed experiment.
